I have volunteered for the 2nd grade mentoring program at my daughter's school. Starting next Friday, and going on weekly for 6 weeks, I will have a group of 5 or 6 kids who are theoretically interested in my are of interest. I have offered to show the kids either computer programming or web design. My original thought was to teach them fundamental programming using the old LOGO programming language. It's an easy one for 8-year olds and they can get immediate results and satisfaction. My wife suggested instead that I should do web design. I can probably teach them basic HTML, but I'm having trouble conceiving what type of web project to do with them. At the end of the 6-week program, the kids are supposed to present to the rest of the grade, the project that they have been working on. I have thought I could have them set up basic webpages. Each kid could have their own page to design with their own style and content. I'm just not sure that that is interesting enough for them. With the programming project, I was thinking of having them write a simple program that would graphically draw out the school's name in block letters.

Does anyone have any thoughts on any of this? I'm open to any and all suggestions. Thanks.

Yeah, well I have my reservations too. When I agreed to do it, it looked like less kids per group. They were trying to get 40 parents to sign up for the entire grade. I guess they got less, so the group sizes have increased. I'll just have to make do with things the way they are.

It can be anything that you are interested in. The idea is to spark interest in the kids and show them that learning has a purpose. They gave a bunch of examples of possible subjects, the ones that made me crack up were fly fishing and blacksmithing. I'm wondering if they would expect the fly fisherman to bring a small pool stocked with trout. If anyone tries to demonstrate blacksmithing, I will leave the building before he/she builds a fire in the room.

I already did an astronomy thing earlier in the school year. I brought my scope to the school and the entire 2nd grade (6 classes) had a chance to observe the moon through it (still a good image despite being daylight).

So this time I volunteered to do either an intro to computer programming or web design. Leaning now towards web design, but haven't made a final decision yet.

I think it would be cool for each of them to be able to design their own family website and load pics and stuff onto it. Plus your daughter is going to love having you there

That is a GREAT idea, Randy!

Mitch, you can have the code already in place.....kinda like sentences and once the kids have "learn't" what you are teaching them let them move the correct code into the correct place to make a "family" website!

Currently I was planning on having that create an "All about me" sort of page.

I am writing a site that will allow them to edit the html online in a WYSIWYG editor and have it automatically save it for them, without having to mess around with ftp programs and trying to get that configured on multiple school computers. This way they can type some html code, save it and then see what it looks like in the browser.